When it comes to making amends, it's never too late. If there were a single principle to guide us in our relations with others — either on a personal or a broader scale — it would be this.
On Feb. 19, 1942, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 on the relocation and internment of Japanese-Americans living on the West Coast of the United States, across the Pacific from America's then-enemy. More than 110,000 of these people, over 60 percent of them American citizens, were rounded up at short notice and interned in concentration camps.
One of those internees, Fred Korematsu, took the United States to court for infringement of his rights. In 1944, the Supreme Court, in Korematsu v. United States, upheld the constitutionality of the president's Executive Order; and the internees were denied their freedom and the redress of justice.